Typically, wireless-communications devices, such as cellular telephones or two-way radios have a housing containing electronic circuitry mounted on interconnected circuit boards. The interconnection of these circuit boards is generally facilitated by flexible electrical links (often called flex cables) that have electrical connectors engaging with respective connectors on the circuit boards to be interconnected.
Today's trend is to make wireless communications devices compact thereby resulting in space constrains inside the device's housing. Consequently, connector sizes are made a small as possible so that they do not occupy excessive areas on the circuit boards. Also, space saving configurations include circuit boards that are arranged so that they are mounted orthogonal to each other such that an edge of one of the circuit boards abuts and provides a retaining force to a resilient pad mounted to an electrical connector (link connector) on the flexible electrical link. This electrical connector is operatively engaged with a circuit board connector associated with an orthogonally mounted circuit board that has a plane orthogonal to the circuit board with the edge that provides the retaining force.
The abovementioned space saving configurations are compact and offer improved retention to the electrical connector that is abutted by the edge of one of the circuit boards, however, the assembly of such an arrangement typically requires a human production line operator (assembler) to use a tool to compress the resilient pad before the circuit board is positioned to provide the retention force. In order to assist in compressing the resilient pad, and then immediately positioning the edge of circuit board to abut this pad, the tool should be thin and narrow. Unfortunately, such a thin and narrow tool may have an edge or edges that are capable of cutting into or indenting the flexible electrical link, this may be a problem especially if care is not taken during production line assembly of the device. Further, when re-assembling the device, for example during maintenance or servicing the device, it is beneficial to use the thin and narrow tool to compress the resilient pad and thus again care should be taken so that the flexible electrical link is not cut or damaged.